Website owner convicted over “Revenge porn” extortion

Kevin Bollaert , the owner of a website (UGotPosted.com) in which people uploaded compromising images of ex-partners has been convicted of identity theft and extortion at the San Diego County Superior Court.

He will be sentenced at a later date and could face up to 20 years in prison.

The website had about 10,000 images posted to it. Most of the images included the victim’s full name and contact details including links to Facebook and Twitter accounts as well as other personal information.

Court documents show that Mr Bollaert was making around $900 a month from advertising on the website.

On top of that, Mr Bollaert ran another website (changemyreputation.com) where he also charged victims $350 to have their images removed from the website. According from paypal records for this website he had received payments of tens of thousands of dollars.

There were more than 24 named victims listed in the case.

Some of the victims testified they suffered humiliation of having their images uploaded to the website and feared for their safety.
Revenge porn is a growing problem all over the world. It’s called “revenge porn” because, although the images may have been taking consensually between partners, they are then uploaded without consent to websites by the disgruntled ex-partner. In this specific case some images were also stolen, often as a result of the victim being hacked.

The jury in this case was unable to reach verdicts on two other changes of conspiracy and identity theft. The judge declared a mistrial on those 2 charges.